


403. nocturne

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [214]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena fled the convent and ran and ran and now she's here, sitting outside the window of the girl who looks just like her. She's playing piano again.





	

Every night Helena crouches outside of the window and watches her twin play piano. She has to do it before it gets too dark, or her twin’s mother – at least she thinks this is a mother, she thinks this is what mothers look like – frowns and twitches the curtains shut. Sometimes Helena stays anyways; she just sits outside the window, hugs her knees to her chest, and listens to the plink-plonk of her sister playing. Her maybe-mother will talk to her in syllables Helena does not understand, _ocumon sayruh arryueefen trine_ , and if Helena is very lucky sometimes her twin will talk back. _Haitthis bluddiepyano haityu hait this bluddiecuntrie pissoff_.

Helena sits there in the dark. _Pissoff, pissoff_. The words never sound real when she says them out loud. Maybe it’s because she’s whispering. Maybe if she sat there and said it louder her twin would hear her, and open the curtain, and pull Helena inside.

Helena keeps her voice down. No one comes to let Helena in. After the piano is done Helena will crawl off into the dark, off to go look for food and a warm enough place to sleep until she can come back.

She is very tired. She is very cold. This is better than the convent, but that’s only because of the sound of the piano. Plink. Plink plink plonk. _Bang_ , a sour shout of notes when her twin slams both small hands on all the keys at once. _Haityu haitthis wanna gohom._

_Sayruh thisis hom nao._

_No’t’snot n’t’snot haityu haitthis haityu—_

If her twin screams loud enough and Helena closes her eyes at just the right moment she can feel it in her chest, a sour shout of notes. That anger. It was enough to pull Helena all the way across the sea, all the way to here. When she left the convent she just closed her eyes and kept walking. She followed the tugging in her chest, the one right across from her heart and this is where it was leading to, she knows it.

She _knows_ it. She does.

So Helena keeps sitting outside the window. On the days before the sun goes down, she watches the way her sister moves. (They must be sisters.) (Why else would this girl look just like her?) There aren’t leaves in her hair, but there are leaves in Helena’s hair. There aren’t scrapes on her knees, but there are scrapes on Helena’s knees. Maybe that’s why Helena is trapped out here, and her sister is in there.

Things go wrong very fast. It happens like this: Helena’s twin turns around from the piano, and Helena doesn’t duck fast enough. It’s just a second. It’s enough.

Helena should run, right then. She doesn’t. She just sits there, heart pounding like a rabbit’s feet hitting the ground. Heart pounding like a rabbit. She’s a rabbit. She doesn’t know much about rabbits, except that people kill them. So she’s a rabbit all the way through.

Voices from inside, nonsense-syllables. Then the sound of footsteps fading. Then – shock – the window opens. Helena looks at her own face. She’s startled by it; when it was behind the glass it wasn’t real, like a story. Now Helena can count the freckles on her own nose. Helena’s nose doesn’t have freckles.

 _Wut thehel sthis_ , says Helena’s sister. _Hoo thehel arryu. Yumai sistur? Haud yu get heer?_

“I’m sorry,” Helena tells her earnestly. “I just wanted to listen. I don’t need any more than that. It’s okay. I can sit out here, and you can sit in there, but I want you to keep playing. Please.”

 _Yudon eefen speek ehnglish_ , says Helena’s sister. She sounds surprised about it. Whatever it is. She fidgets, shifts from foot to foot. _Luk arryu – hungry? Dyu need a playse tustay?_

Helena stares at her blankly. She stares back. Then she makes an annoyed face, points at Helena – _you_ – and points behind her – _here_.

Helena is a rabbit. All the way through.

Before she can open her mouth and give an answer, there are footsteps on the stairs. Helena’s sister’s face goes white. _Haid_ , she says. _Haid_.

“Hide?” Helena says, but there’s no answer – just the flap of the curtain closing in her face. Probably _hide_. Helena ducks below the windowsill again, presses her palm to her chest to feel her heart pounding. Rabbit run. Run, rabbit, run. _Haityu_ , she says to herself. _Haitthis_. Maybe that’s her sister’s name. Maybe that means something.

Or maybe it means something terrible. It’s all a shot in the dark.

The yelling gets louder inside, and Helena knows she’s stayed too long. She swallows something down, crawls away through the bushes. It’s for the best, probably. Maybe her twin was telling her that she had to stay outside, and never ever come inside through the glass. Maybe her twin was telling her that she was too dirty and scraped-up and hungry to be loved.

Helena climbs to her feet, brushes herself off, and pads in bare feet along the sidewalk back to the hole she’s made for herself. She is very hungry, and she holds this thought where the food should go: maybe Helena’s sister was inviting her in. Maybe if Helena had climbed through the window that mother could have been _her_ mother, that piano _her_ piano, that girl _hers_. She could eat a sandwich. She could eat _two_ sandwiches, which could be enough to make her full.

There’s a tugging in Helena’s chest pulling her back the way she came. She wraps her arms around herself. She keeps walking.

**Author's Note:**

> Transcription for the phonetics:
> 
> SIOBHAN: Oh come on, Sarah, are you even trying.  
> SARAH: Hate this bloody piano, hate you, hate this bloody country, piss off.
> 
> SARAH: Hate you. Hate this. Wanna go home.  
> SIOBHAN: Sarah, this is home now.  
> SARAH: No it's not, no it's not, hate you hate this hate you—
> 
> SARAH: What the hell is this? Who the hell are you? You my sister? How'd you get here?  
> SARAH: You don't even speak English. Look, are you -- hungry? D'you need a place to stay?  
> SARAH: Hide. Hide.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [257\. left unsaid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528389) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09)




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